ARCHITECTURE, LAND, AND COLONIALISM IN SICILY AND LIBYA, 1861-1943: TWO INTERTWINED HISTORIES
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Titled, “Land, Architecture, and Colonialism in Sicily and Libya, 1861-1943: Two intertwined histories,” my dissertation investigates the architectures designed and built by two Italian agencies: the Ente per la Colonizzazione della Libia (Agency for the Colonization of Libya) and the Ente per la Colonizzazione del Latifondo Siciliano (Agency for the Colonization of the Sicilian Latifundia) between 1932 and 1943. It does so by exploring both the inner colonization of the Italian South in the aftermath of the peninsula unification (1861) and the colonization of Libya (1912-1943) as keycomponents of Italy’s nation-building and the Fascist era. I question the role that land and the built environment played in producing the Sicilian Question, promoting settler colonialism in Libya during the Liberal age (1861-1922), and developing it as part of a wider reclamation project of land and people in Italy and abroad under the Fascist regime (1922-1943). Drawing on a range of primary sources and focusing on the writings of Italian scholars and rural economists on land, bonifica (land reclamation), and colonization, I explore the multiple imbrications between the Southern Question in Italy and the colonization question abroad. I shed light on the central role of the ruralist planning utopia, which—largely overlooked by previous architectural histories—grew from Leopoldo Franchetti’s colonization experiments in Eritrea during the Liberal era to Mussolini’s anti-urban ideology. I challenge traditional male-centered narratives, making space at every step for the voices, practices, and testimonies of female scholars, activists, and ordinary women